Fred Goss

Straddling roles as writer, director, producer, and actor, multihyphenate Fred Goss launched his career in the early 2000s with a starring role on the quirky Bravo comedy series Significant Others, which offered a highly improvisational comic riff on group psychotherapy, cutting back and forth between the private lives of four couples and their respective therapy sessions. That program received an enthusiastic critical response, but failed to score with the public, so it had a very limited run.

Unfortunately, Goss' follow up on one of the main networks, Sons & Daughters (aired on ABC in 2006 and not to be confused with the 1991 CBS Lucie Arnaz drama of the same title) failed to catch fire with viewers as well, and was less successful with critics, some of whom dismissed it as a diluted version of the same general setup and as a knock-off of Arrested Development. Starring Goss, Gillian Vigman, and Dee Wallace, this irreverent sitcom concerned an overstressed suburbanite (Goss) plagued with stresses and frustrations from a bunch of nutty characters who surround him, and whose inability to keep secrets to themselves trigger a chain reaction of catastrophic consequences. Goss took on writing, producing, and directing duties for the series, but it unfortunately folded after less than one season.

Not one to be daunted, Goss quickly teamed up with Arrested Development creators Anthony and Joe Russo to star in their new series comedy Carpoolers (2007), about a group of middle-aged men who engage in irreverent discussions together on their shared drive to and from work each day, and the office complications that ensue for each man in between drives. The program co-starred Jerry O'Connell, Jerry Minor, and Tim Peper, but again, it failed to gain a wide enough audience to carry on into a second season. - Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide